Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy has identified a key difference between the national broadband plan and the commercial delivery of connectivity, which is the reason the NBP was developed. When commercial providers such as Siro, Eir, or Virgin, for example, go around the country to connect homes, they connect the low-hanging fruit, the commercially-viable and easy-to-access homes. Once they meet something that makes connection not worth it such as a railway line, a river or some other obstacle, they just go up another road instead. As the Deputy said, this has meant that lots of people all over the country were left out. NBI does not have that option. This is a universal service and NBI has to connect every home in the deployment area to get the payment. The threshold is 100%, which makes it much harder. The cost is much higher than the cost per home of the delivery of the previous commercial providers. That is the essential difference between commercial and non-commercial provision.

The Deputy pointed out that a large proportion of the subvention money is to go to Eir as a subcontractor but that money will go out over 25 years. NBI will take in revenue by way of charges on people who have connected to the network.

The major part of the income from NBI will not be from the State but from the people who are being provided with a service. The company will use that money to pay Eir for the rental of its poles and ducts over a period of 25 years. It is giving Eir a long-term future for its rural broadband network. All the unblocking of ducts, putting up new poles and replacing old ones is investment and strengthening its network. From Eir's perspective, this also makes sense. We need to ensure that these incentives are properly aligned. Eir gets a long-term future for its rural network and, at the same, time people living in rural Ireland are able to get fibre-optic broadband through NBI. That is the alignment of the two.

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